Oolite Bulletins

I have no experience designing stations, (Though I do intend to have a go at one or two at some stage), so don’t know exactly what is involved.

Having said that if you are still struggling with the vertical section in the 3D model let me know and I will have a go at sorting it out for you.

Regarding the size of the docking port I suggest if you can advise which panel/panels you want to form the bay from we can check the size and amend the model scale to suit.

I wanted to have the dock near the back of the station, which I know creates a problem as the model has a 'ridge' at the back, so perhaps I should try and create an addtional part at the back that comes out slightly, and then cut a hole of 192x64 so that the dock can fit in there? The alternative would be to enlarge the station and perhaps put the dock on one of the panels next to this 'ridge'?

Pleb - Regarding your second suggestion in order to get a flat surface large enough for the docking bay have a look at the following. Any questions let me know.

1 Open Wings and select the entire model.

2 Right click and select scale uniform.

3 Press tab and type 120 i.e. for a increase in size of 20%.

4 Press space to deselect all.

5 Select the panel shown in the picture below.

6 Right click and select flatten.

7 Select Z

You should now have a station 20% larger than previous with a vertical flat panel measuring 196m wide and 82m high
.

Okay I've tried and failed... I just can't seem to get my dock to actually appear inside the station!



I've also tried to cut a hole in the station to no effect - it has a hole in Wings 3D but doesn't come up in the game for some reason...



Ignore the green space, I modified the code in this version so that the planetinfo.plist can be used to change the colour of the space background and I keep forgetting to reset it back to black.



EDIT: Okay I was being stupid and forgot to export wings 3d model to obj before converting into dat, so it was still same model haha! So I've managed to get my dock into the station now...



Only problem is there's a bit of a gap around the hole! Not quite sure how to fill the gaps bit I'm getting there.



Think the gun has shrumk in length though...just as well its being guarded by these Frigates...

Pleb wrote:

Only problem is there's a bit of a gap around the hole! Not quite sure how to fill the gaps bit I'm getting there. :twisted:

Work out what the coordinates of the vertices for the hole should be, then move them there. (To move a vertex to precise coordinates, select just the one vertex, then use Absolute Commands → Move.) Alternatively, model the docking bay as part of the station geometry and use an invisible docking port model.

Ahruman wrote:

Pleb wrote:

Only problem is there's a bit of a gap around the hole! Not quite sure how to fill the gaps bit I'm getting there.

Work out what the coordinates of the vertices for the hole should be, then move them there. (To move a vertex to precise coordinates, select just the one vertex, then use Absolute Commands → Move.) Alternatively, model the docking bay as part of the station geometry and use an invisible docking port model.

Ah thank you Ahruman I will try this and see if I can close up the gaps.

Ahruman wrote:

Alternatively, model the docking bay as part of the station geometry and use an invisible docking port model.

Here is a mesh that has the same dimensions as dock-flat.dat but is completely invisible: http://jens.ayton.se/oolite/files/ahrum ... k_flat.dat

If not, there's always this option:
http://www.emmaclarke.com/media/7008/mind-the-gap.mp3

Pleb - It does look as though the gun may have shrunk a little.

If you would like to scale it back up and don't know how to do it let me know.

Your orbital turret is looking good by the way.

Shipbuilder wrote:

Pleb - It does look as though the gun may have shrunk a little.

well it is cold in space after all..

Shipbuilder wrote:

Pleb - It does look as though the gun may have shrunk a little.

If you would like to scale it back up and don't know how to do it let me know.

Your orbital turret is looking good by the way.

Thanks Shipbuilder, I will have a go at it and if I get stuck I will no doubt be asking away!

Griff wrote:

Shipbuilder wrote:

Pleb - It does look as though the gun may have shrunk a little.

well it is cold in space after all..

I was also thinking along these lines when I wrote the reply (I even deleted my first attempt and rewrote it)

Alright alright, back on subject as I don't want a moderator to split this topic into a new one called 'Size of Pleb's Gun'...

I'm not to sure about the texture, I simply took the one you have before and cut the black bits out and pasted over an image the same size of a metalic texture. I'd love to put maybe a logo on the side but considering how complicated the texture is this might be beyond my skills. I do like the texture on Wildeblood's version but there are bit where it doesn't look like it matches up very well, which is what I liked about mine as its simplistic enough not to show up as much.

Pleb wrote:

I do like the texture on Wildeblood's version but there are bit where it doesn't look like it matches up very well, which is what I liked about mine as its simplistic enough not to show up as much.

It's Simon B's Alien-hull, a.k.a. Neolite Dodo texture. I made no attempt to make it fit, I just dropped it on to show shipbuilder what I had in mind when I opined it should be "shiny and gold, nothing subtle". I think it worked well on the gun, not so much the ball.

So I've managed to plug the gap and now have a docking bay in my giant boob nipple gun station. I have tried to make the gun larger, but its hard to select just the gun and not everything else. I also need to pt flashers on my station but I've never even attempted this before. They need to go on the docking bay and maybe a few on the outside of the station. If I manage to get this done I will post another screenshot.